PYT
by jdho2
Summary: When Sam, Steve, and Bucky need a safe place to stay while they figure out what to do with HYDRA on their tail, they get help from Steve's trusted acquaintance, Ranger Manoso. Of course, staying in Rangeman pretty much guarantees that Sam will meet Steph at some point. Too bad for him he's listening to music when he finally does.


**A/N: Samtember 5 Prompt -** " _September 21: Soundtrack- Now's a good time to break out those mood boards and aesthetic pieces. What songs and moods suit Sam the best? For you writers and artists, incorporate some tunes into your work."_

Okay, so truth be told, I'm pretty much certain that Sam and I? We do not have anything approaching the same taste in music. So I was going to skip a day, but then I figured, everyone appreciates a good, guilty pleasure Michael Jackson sing-along every once in awhile, right?

Whoops, turned into a Soulmate A/U as well… guess I might as well just admit that they all will be, right? We'll consider this one to have taken place shortly after CATWS, and definitely pre-Ultron. It is not Ant-Man compliant either. Hey, it's an A/U, so maybe the Ultron universe never comes to be in this timeline.

 **P.Y.T - Steph/Sam**

Because of their betrayal and the role they'd played in HYDRA's infiltration of SHIELD and the attempt to murder millions of people (starting with Steve) Steve had been understandably wary of speaking about his STRIKE team for a long time after we left D.C. to search for Bucky.

It was tough to see because Cap was so clearly someone who cared about his various teams. It started with Bucky, really, as it was the two of them against the world. And two people could make a team.

The Avengers were odd because they'd come together, fought, then mostly gone their separate ways. Tony had created rooms for them all at what he was calling Avengers Tower, but so far nobody had taken him up on it as far as I understood other than Dr. Banner. Steve had worked closely with Natasha, and they were probably a team as well, but she was off doing her thing after leaking all her identities on the web.

For the last few months he'd been at SHIELD, Steve had been in the process of developing another team. It was his STRIKE team. Although he hadn't been able to get that close to them for reasons that were now painfully obvious, they had been his team. They'd had shared experiences, and some of those stories were actually quite funny. Steve had believed there was at the very least a mutual respect there, and it made their betrayal painful.

It wasn't until we located Bucky and he was doing better that Steve started sharing some of those STRIKE team stories. One of the most interesting things I had learned was that Steve and STRIKE hadn't exclusively worked with SHIELD. Sometimes when SHIELD sent them out, they'd taken groups from other branches of the armed forces, used teams from other countries, or worked with mercenary groups.

We were having a tough time figuring out where to go, and it was a fact that was greatly complicated by the need to constantly be moving. We had people after us, and every time that we found somewhere to stay long enough to try to come up with a plan, we were forced to go on the run again.

Finally, Steve told us about a mission they'd run in conjunction with a mercenary group had a leader who went by the name Ranger. Steve seemed fairly certain Ranger wouldn't be HYDRA, but rather was a man of an extremely straight, narrow compass, even if it didn't always define North the same way the law did. Still we'd searched for and read through as much information as we could, which was surprisingly little.

In the end we decided to move forward trusting Steve's intuition and relying on our shared ability to fight our way out of a bad situation if we needed to. Deciding on the direct approach, Steve, Bucky, and I walked into the front door of the headquarters of his company, Rangeman, in Trenton, New Jersey on a Friday morning.

Bucky and Steve both had baseball caps pulled down low over their foreheads, so I took the lead as we approached the manned desk in the lobby.

"Hello, we'd like to speak to Mr. Manoso," I said politely to the man working there, trying my best not to stare at the skull tattoo on his forehead.

"Do you have an appointment?" he asked.

"No, we do not, but we'd like to see him anyway. I think he'll see us," I tried.

The man sighed, and focused on me as he said, "I really can't help you if you don't have an appointment."

"Could you maybe call him and ask? If he's in that is," I didn't expect it to be easy, but I still let out a relieved sigh when he finally picked up the phone.

To me he said, "If he'll see you, you're going to need to leave all weapons behind. And who should I tell him is asking?"

Apparently done treading lightly, Steve pulled his cap off and calmly stated, "Steve Rogers and associates."

The man gaped at Steve for a few minutes and stammered before nodding his head. He pushed a button on the phone in front of him and finally stammered, "Boss, Captain America is here?"

Less than a minute later, a man dressed head to toe in black opened a door to the stairwell and strode forward confidently.

"Captain," he said offering his hand. "If you'll follow me, we'll go speak in my office."

Once we made it upstairs, Steve introduced Bucky and I, and to the man's credit, he didn't flinch even though he clearly knew who Bucky was.

"How can I help you?" Ranger asked, sitting behind his desk, leaning back with his fingers steepled in front of his mouth and his index fingers tapping together.

Steve blew out a breath and said, "we need somewhere safe to stay until we figure out our next play. I'm thinking we'll end up moving to Manhattan and staying with Stark, but I need to talk to him and go over some things first. Do you have a safe house we can use? We have plenty of money, and we can pay for it's use. But the places we know are pretty much burned and we've been having a difficult time setting one up."

"We spent three days shaking our tail before we arrived," Bucky contributed, speaking for the first time. "I'm confident we weren't followed here."

Ranger studied us silently, then flicked his eyes over to his computer screen. He tapped a few keys on his keyboard, and then said, "nonsense, you'll stay here. Best security I have to offer, and you can use fleet cars when you need to go out. Tinted windows, no one will know you're here if you're sure you weren't followed. And if they do somehow find you, we can easily withstand an assault."

Steve looked like he was thinking about protesting, but he finally nodded his head. Ranger stood and we followed him as he walked to what appeared to be some sort of control room and grabbed three sets of keys.

"I have nightmares," Bucky said curtly. "It's best if I share with Steve for the time being, so he can keep me from tearing up the place if I do. I'll sleep on a couch if it's got one. Floor's fine too."

Ranger nodded but put back two sets of keys before grabbing two from one of the few hooks with a pair of keys on it. Then he guided us around, showed us the shooting range and the gym, offering us free use of both before showing me to a studio apartment and Bucky and Steve to a small two bedroom.

Slowly our presence became known within the building, which was difficult for Bucky to accept, but got easier as the days went without us getting burned. During our stay, we heard tales of a woman named Steph, and Bucky and Steve each actually met her a few times, but somehow I kept missing her.

When I learned that she had accepted a job working for Ranger full time a few weeks before and was working to get up to the fitness qualification levels, I figured my best chance of meeting her was in the gym. So, maybe I spent a little more time in there than needed, but what could I say? I was curious because the men always talked about her, and in just a couple days that extended to Steve and Bucky as well.

Because I was working with Bucky and Steve on 80s music, I didn't even think anything of it when the song came onto the iPod I was listening to. Not even knowing what my as of yet unmatched romantic soulmate's first words to me would be. I was alternating between bench pressing and tapping my toes while I was resting with my music turned up, so I didn't hear her approach.

When her beautiful face popped up in my line of sight, the song just seemed so spot on, that I couldn't resist singing to her.

" _I_ _want to love you (P-Y-T)_

 _Pretty young thing_

 _You need some lovin' (T-L-C)_

 _Tender lovin' care_

 _And I'll take you there_ "

In my periphery, I saw Cap stand, clearly irritated. Thankfully the weights were safely in their holder as I replayed the lyrics in my mind and realized that they were probably inappropriate. Wincing I shot up to sitting and pulled the earbuds out.

"I'm so sorry," I stammered. "it was playing and then you were there, and you're pretty. And it just seemed to fit. I did _not_ mean to offend you and I'm so, so sorry if I did. Actually I'm sorry even if I didn't offend you-"

I cut out when the woman surprised me by laughing and then straddling the bench and sitting in my lap, "the only thing you should be sorry about is the Michael Jackson connection." Her eyes danced with her laughter, and she ran her fingers lightly over my hair. Before the fact that she'd just said the words on my soulmark fully clicked, she added, "Do you have any idea how awkward that made things after the whole child molestation lawsuit thing? My mom kept asking me if I'd met Michael Jackson and did he touch me inappropriately. You think she'd know if I'd met the King of Pop, but I think she was more interested in settlement money than anything else. Anyway, that's not important right now."

"What's important is we finally found each other," I agreed.

"Wait, you're making us listen to songs by a child molester?" Steve asked sounding betrayed.

"Alleged!" another voice called out from somewhere in the gym.

I didn't even notice when the bickering started because Steph pulled me in for a kiss and I chose to give that all my attention. I'd give Steve the links to the Wikipedia pages another time if he was really that concerned about it. For the moment, I had a soulmate to get to know.


End file.
